Melvyn Bragg and his guests, Frank Close, Prof of Physics at Oxford; Jenny Nelson, Prof of Physics & Lesley Cohen, Prof of Solid State Physics at Imperial College London discuss the physics of electrical conduction.
Radio 4 -Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of ideas.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the physics of electrical conduction. Although electricity has been known for several hundred years, it was only in the early twentieth century that physicists first satisfactorily explained the phenomenon. Electric current is the passage of charged particles through a medium - but a material will only conduct electricity if its atomic structure enables it to do so.
In investigating electrical conduction scientists discovered two new classes of material. Semiconductors, first exploited commercially in the 1950s, have given us the transistor, the solar cell and the silicon chip, and have revolutionised telecommunications. And superconductors, remarkable materials first observed in 1911, are used in medical imaging and at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
With:
Frank Close
Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford
Jenny NelsonProfessor of Physics at Imperial College London
Lesley CohenProfessor of Solid State Physics at Imperial College London
Producer: Thomas Morris.
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